


cause its you (oh, it's always you)

by jonphaedrus



Series: let's go to bed before you say how you feel [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alexander the Creator Spoilers, Blow Jobs, Local Men Maybe Talk About Feelings For Like Maybe Five Seconds, M/M, Massage, Porn with Feelings, Premature Ejaculation, Prostate Massage, Service Top, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:21:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8279258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “I thought that you were dead.” He didn’t seem to realise that he was repeating himself when he said it. Cid knew what he was about to say before he said it and couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d wanted to. “I tried to jump off of a bridge.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [14kuponuts](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=14kuponuts).



> title from [the vaccines "i always knew"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84no_HITKFo)
> 
> :^^^^^)

“They didn’t have conjurers at the church?” Nero’s voice was pitched low, and Cid found it almost as comforting as his hands, smoothing gently over the bottom of his stomach. “These healed very badly.”

“They did,” Nero’s thumb had found a knot of scar tissue, the one Cid had pulled in Alexander, and he was slowly beginning to use the heat of his palms to warm up the skin and muscle. “But I was one of dozens who needed treatment. We all took what we could get.” He’d been blasted out of the air at Cartenau, and even he didn’t know what had happened that day. His memories, now that they had returned, were hazy in the days before Cartenau and almost nonexistent for weeks afterward. Y’shtola, before her trip through the Aether, had given him her best opinion and she had said they would like as not never return.

Apparently, for many with similar injuries, it wasn’t unheard of.

He’d been left, from that fateful day, with shrapnel scars that twisted over his entire left side and much of his shoulder and arm, stretching from his ribs around halfway of his back. The injury that had robbed him of a good deal of his memories was now no more than a sharp, raised scar on the underside of his skull. It pained him no longer, but the mess that was his torso hurt in cold weather and too much motion could easily inflame it. That was what had happened, in Alexander—he’d thrown himself free of their near-death experience, and consequently had badly torn the muscles. They’d heal on their own given time, since there was naught more that magic nor potions could do for them, but this would give him back his range of motion sooner than he might otherwise have regained it.

The gentle press of Nero’s fingertips closer to a kiss than any of the kisses they had recently shared. “If I had known sooner—“

“When _did_ you know?” He’d always wondered who had figured out where he was; who had sent those soldiers that had been the first sign, even then, that there was more to the amnesiac Marques than met the eye. Even then, Cid had known that those soldiers were bad news.

Then again, when Nero was around, he could never quite shake the feeling of being watched. Even when they had been teenagers. Even now.

Nero made a quiet noise of thought as he shifted the touches on Cid’s skin from gentle exploration to deeper motion. He had found the knot, and now he was trying to work it out, his fingertips pressed in hard between Cid’s ribs, leaving him hissing as the muscle began to tense up under the pressure. “Shortly before the Warrior of Light defeated Ifrit,” he settled on at last. “When I was in Camp Drybone—“ ah yes, when the XIVth facilitated the summoning of Ifrit, they’d never known when to stop meddling— “I heard about a man living at Saint Adama Ladama who had a gift for magitek repair. I was curious.”

“Did you think it was me?”

“I thought you dead.” Cid opened his eyes, surprised, and looked up to Nero above him. In the dim half-light of the lamp of his bedroom in Idyllshire, with his coat off and his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, showing the pale column of his neck and the arch of his collarbones, he looked vulnerable and raw, the dishabille more open than anything he might have said. Nero was straddling Cid’s hips on the bed, keeping him pinned while fixing his side and back, both of them still wearing their trousers. With the light softening the sharp lines of his narrow face and angular chin, revealing the soft lines that caged his eyes, he looked—tired. Sad. “We all did. When the _Enterprise_ went down and only wreckage could be found amidst all the chaos—you should have heard Gaius curse Nael.” Nero paused, and cracked one of his cocky half-smiles; pleased. “He sounded like you.” Well, he had raised Cid to be his mirror image. “If I remember correctly, he called Nael a _thrice-gods-damned aether-_ _soaked_ _eikon fucker.”_

“They never did much like one another.” Cid laughed, jarring Nero’s fingers from his chest, but he came back again with a vengeance, working the knot until Cid was hissing again.

“He cared less for losing Eorzea—“ (again) “And more that the world had lost you.”

“And what about you, Nero? “ Cid reached over, stilled the other man’s fingers, brushed their thumbs together. He swallowed a lump in his throat, watched the other man’s eyes. They were so blue, gods, bluer than the sky. With the shadow from the lamp casting his face into shadow they were just all the bluer and flickering with light, hooded under his expressive eyelids and thick, arched brows. “What did you do?”

“I—“ Nero’s voice came out choked and rough, like sandpaper. “I thought that you were dead.” He didn’t seem to realise that he was repeating himself when he said it. Cid knew what he was about to say before he said it and couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d wanted to. “I tried to jump off of a bridge.” His voice was barely above a breath when he said it, and in the dead silence of Cid’s bedroom it hung like a knife. He’d stopped what he was doing and they’re watching one another, Cid still holding his fingers. It hardly seemed real. “What did I have left to live for, Cid?” As always, when Nero bared his soul he did so utterly. His ridiculous self-aggrandising lies crumbled away like dust in the rain. “All our lives I’ve been in your shadow, whether you intended it or not. With you gone—there was nobody else to live up to any more. Just your memory in our minds, and Gaius never held another man in more esteem. I could never be you to him. I could never be you to anyone. I could never—“

Nero choked then, ducked his head, hiding his face. “You’d gone somewhere I couldn’t follow even when I wanted to. I followed you to Eorzea and then you left and _what_ Cid _what_ was I supposed to do.”

Cid stared at the other man, his heart bared, powerful shoulders slumped, and after a moment he sat up just far enough to take Nero’s face in his hands, pull him down. He was crying, blue eyes bright, and his mouth was bruised and soft. “The world is a terribly lonely place without you,” Nero whispered, heated. “There’s nobody else who makes me feel like you do.”

Cid kissed him. Just—grabbed Nero by the thick hair curling at the nape of his neck, dragged him down, and _kissed_ him. Bit his lower lip until his mouth opened, held his hand tight, held his head down, and kissed him. Kissed him until Nero was pinning him to the sheets with a hand on the base of his stomach, grinding their hips together where they were straddled and leg-locked. It was like when they were teenagers again: Cid couldn’t stop kissing him. Nero had always had soft, full lips, and kissing him was a delight. He hadn’t shaved recently, and sported stubble that rasped against Cid’s own beard, his free hand cupped around the side of Cid’s neck, then his waist, then his hipbone, clutching him like he’d vanish between breaths.

Cid ignored the fact that the kiss tasted like salt, damp and hollow, because he knew Nero would not want him to mention it.

They kissed until Cid tried to press his hips up against Nero’s, and then he broke away hissing, face tight with pain, when he pulled the injured muscle in his side. “Hells,” he whispered, panting for breath, as Nero leaned back, settling their thighs together again. While they’d kissed Cid had made a ruin of his hair, blond curls falling out of place and all over his face, sticking up slightly in the back. His eyes were wet, and his lips red and swollen. He was out of breath, and watching him pant, Cid found himself grinning. Nero smiled back, all teeth.

“You’ll never say it, will you?” Cid didn’t dignify that with a response, just flopped bonelessly back down on the bed, pressed his hand to the ache in his side. “Stop, you’re only making it worse.” He hated it when Nero was right.

Giving up on dealing with it himself, Cid let his arms splay to his sides and sank back into his pillow while Nero turned his attention to the curve of his ribs again, found the knot, and started working on it. They fell into a comfortable silence, Cid trying not to think about how Nero had looked when he’d said what he’d done without Cid, that night a year previously in the shower when Nero had looked at him like Cid held his heart in his hands. “Roll over,” Nero murmured after a time, when he’d finally gotten the tightness in Cid’s ribs to go away, moving around to his back.

Breathing easier without that ache constricting his lungs, Cid relaxed down into his mattress, eyes shut as Nero then eased the tension on his side and finally his back. He hadn’t even realised how off his body was, how oddly he was carrying in his back and neck until Nero had found the stress and ache, and he was like putty in the other man’s hands, sighing here and there, hissing when something tender got pinched. It was working, though, working better than anything else Cid had ever tried to relieve the old, badly-healed injuries. He floated somewhere far away. He was exhausted, worn out, worn thin. It had been months since he’d been able to properly relax, because even with Thordan dealt with, there was always some new disaster or calamity. He was, in fact, most of the way into drowsiness when he felt Nero’s fingers sliding down his back, away from the scars, to his lumbar. “May I?” His voice was low and hoarse, thick, and Cid found himself smiling into his pillow.

He could, now that he’d been jarred out of being half asleep, feel Nero’s erection pressed into the top of his thighs. “You have a thing for seeing me helpless?” he mumbled, slurring the words, and Nero made a quiet, desperate noise in response, pressed a stubbly kiss to the bottom of his left shoulderblade.

“You keep moaning.”

Ah.

“Go ahead,” Cid added, and Nero whimpered his thanks before he returned to his massage. Cid’s back wasn’t painful any more now that Nero had left behind the scarring on his ribs: now it was just touching for the sake of touching, for Nero to get him to moan. Cid stopped holding it back: he whimpered and whined and gasped in approval and pleasure when the other man got a tender spot, and he _did_ make a noise of loneliness and desperation when Nero rolled away from him, left him bereft and cool on the mattress without his body heat there pressing him down into the sheets.

He was back soon enough, though, with the lotion from Cid’s bedside table and minus his trousers. Cid obligingly lifted his hips for the other man to get his own off, not sliding them any further down than the tops of his thighs, and he canted his ass up and into the thick, damp length of Nero’s cock. His fingers were just as gentle opening Cid up as they had been on his ribs, far gentler than Cid would have been with himself, gentle enough that he began to drowse again. He always forgot how careful the other man was with him; Nero’s tongue-lashings oft left raw weals, but he held Cid like he was something fragile and unfathomably precious.

The press of the damp head of Nero’s cock against his entrance woke him up again, but not even all the way this time. Usually there was some tightness, some difficulty getting in: this time Nero settled inside him balls-deep without any strain on either of their parts.

Cid moaned, shaky and raw into the pillow even as Nero sobbed hard over him. He felt busted-open and, gods, as full as the ocean all at once. It was the softest, slowest fuck they’d ever had, no doubt in part because he was barely awake, letting the other man set the pace, letting Nero use him and loving just being used. Nero came quickly, as he always did, seizing hard over him and pressing in tight as he did so. After he was done, he pulled out, and Cid grunted at the splatter all over both his thighs, He was sore, as he _always_ was after Nero rode his ass with his fucking monster cock, but it was so much less than usual. Instead, he was loose and lax, and after a time that was hard to grasp the totality of, Nero kissed down his back again, stopped at the crack of his ass, and coaxed him into turning over onto his back.

As drowsy and relaxed as he was, it was hard to do and almost more effort than it was worth, but Cid did anyway, and hitched his knees up when he felt Nero’s long, blunt fingers inside him, finding and then grinding gently into his prostate. “Oh, fuck,” he moaned, pressing the back of one hand over his eyes, shaking at the feel of it. “Fuck.” First two, and then three and four fingers in him, he could feel the width of Nero’s knuckles hard against his rim, and gods, _gods_ it felt good, wide open around him and Cid’s teeth grit and his thighs spring-tight with the pressure inside him and the starburst whiteout behind his eyes.

And then Nero got his mouth on Cid’s cock, and in the pendulous space between one hanging breath and the next, he came apart in shaking shreds, his breath a shattering gasp. Fingers curled white-knuckled in the thick curls at the base of Nero’s neck, knees tight around his head, one ankle slipped over the sharp jut of Nero’s soulderblade, his body on-edge and curled and ruined and—

White noise.

 

 

Cid came back to himself after decades, wrung-out and worn like an old flannel used too many times. Nero’s breath was warm on his thigh and his soft cock, his fingers tangled and gentling in the other man’s hair that spilled free and soft over his skin. He opened his eyes eventually and looked down and found Nero watching him.

He looked startlingly young with his hair mussed, his blue eyes hooded and scorching warm. He was smiling, his swollen lips soft and pleased. Cid smiled back at him, stupidly, and brushed the curls out of his face, cupped his cheek.

“I love you,” Cid murmured. Nero’s smile fell a little bit, caved in like fragile shattered glass.

“You’re just saying that because I sucked your dick.” He sounded like he was about to cry, his voice cracking slightly.

“No,” Cid smiled, closing his eyes, carding his fingers through the soft, short hair just under Nero’s ear, “I meant it.”

**Author's Note:**

> the teaser clip at the end of 3.4 more like:
> 
>  


End file.
